President Christian Wulff on Tuesday attempted to tone down Germany's simmering integration debate, slamming “blanket judgement” of Turkish immigrants at the start of his state visit to Turkey.

In the wake of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s tough rhetoric at the weekend, when she claimed that multiculturalism had “utterly failed,” Wulff stressed that Germany was not condemning an entire community.

“I consider it wrong to claim that a whole group cannot and does not want to integrate,” he told Turkish newspaper Hürriyet, in an interview published Tuesday. “I am against any blanket judgement.”